November 6th-November 12th // Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes
In This Edition!
ChatGPT wants your customer relationship
Claude wants to be your productivity suite
You’ve bought AI tools. You’ve built AI products. But your team sounds and acts the same, and the revenue needle isn’t moving. You need to:
a) Build an AI playbook that everyone can use…
b) Enable your entire team on the playbook…
…In order to create real, significant business impact.
Leveling up your team on AI is the biggest growth lever you can pull in 2027. Don’t take it from us, take it from BCG. We can help. Let’s chat!
Top Headlines🔥
OpenAI’s new business agents give brands a free way into the conversation it’s also selling as an ad🔒
Source: Digiday
November 10th, 2026
Summary: OpenAI launched Business Hub, a home base for brands inside ChatGPT. They can plug in a catalog of products, current prices, and what’s in stock. US retailers and service companies can also set up a Business Agent that chats with shoppers about their products within ChatGPT. When shoppers are ready to buy, the agent sends them to the brand’s site. OpenAI builds each Business Agent using the brand’s catalog and instructions. Shoppers can find the agent when ChatGPT mentions the brand in an answer, which is free and earned for the brand. Brands can also pay to run ads that send shoppers to the same Business Agent. OpenAI began testing these “sponsored agent” ads🔒 in September. A new beta reporting tab🔒 in Business Hub charts how often ChatGPT links to a brand, how many people click through, and what topics come up in those conversations. Brands don’t get specific prompts, user data, or competitive data. There’s no fee yet for Business Hub and Business Agents, though OpenAI left the door open for monetization.
Opinion: For twenty years, the deal was simple. You paid Google for a click, and the click brought someone to your website. There, you made your pitch, collected data, and closed the sale. Business Hub moves all of that into ChatGPT. ChatGPT sends a user to your ChatGPT agent, which acts as your storefront, your sales rep, and your customer service desk. Give it a try now while it's free. Train it like a new hire on your products and your brand voice. See what it does, if anything, for your business. But go in clear-eyed. You’re handing OpenAI your customer relationship. If it’s not doing anything for your business, it’s probably not worth it. At least not right now.
United Airlines bans AI agents from booking flights on behalf of travelers
Source: CBS News
November 11th, 2026
Summary: The airline says giving AI assistants your account login can expose sensitive information. It also says agents could make purchases, change accounts, or spend MileagePlus miles against a traveler’s wishes. An agent checking someone in could break federal rules that require travelers to personally confirm their bags don’t contain banned items. United will block agents on its own website and app and will also restrict them through travel agencies and aggregators. Southwest is going the other way and making its flights visible to ChatGPT users.
Opinion: United’s security concerns are real, but they could be addressed, if United really wanted to address them. So this is about control. United doesn’t mind middlemen; it still sells through Google Flights and Kayak. It minds a new middleman sitting between it and its most valuable asset: customer loyalty. In 2020, MileagePlus was appraised at more than the entire airline was worth. An agent hunting for the best fare doesn’t care about status or miles, so to the agent, United is just another seat. The brands built on customer loyalty (Amazon with Prime, United with MileagePlus) are locking agents out. The challengers that compete on price, with less to lose (Walmart, Southwest) are letting them in. But the blockers must be careful. Once agents become how people shop, the agent will simply say, “I can’t book United, so here’s the next-best flight.” Blocking only works as long as customers are loyal enough to book themselves.
New Products & Features 🚀
What It Does: Claude is becoming an AI office suite, in the mold of Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, with AI-driven meeting, planning, and spreadsheet apps. Claude Meetings joins video calls, follows the discussion, and answers questions in the meeting chat using info from connected apps. Claude Whiteboards builds a plan with timelines while a team talks through it. Claude Sheets is a spreadsheet tool, and Claude Data pulls data from different platforms and turns it into summaries, dashboards, and videos. New interactive connectors also let Claude work inside the full versions of other companies’ software. Anthropic’s IPO is expected in the next week.
Quick Take: Microsoft and Google have had years to make their AI work well within their productivity suites, and they’ve fumbled. Many say Claude’s AI works better in Microsoft and Google. Embarrassing. Claude has become a go-to productivity tool for enterprise and marketing teams, and it has built up lots of business context. Now that Claude has native whiteboards, meetings, and sheets, it can tie that business context to everyday productivity work, likely cheaper and faster than piping Claude into Microsoft and Google’s suites. With this launch, Anthropic is making a play for more and more of a marketer’s productivity territory. Imagine a future where all your marketing agents run in Claude (remember Claudeforce?) and connect to your productivity tools seamlessly.
What It Does: Ogilvy partnered with Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to build ECHO, an AI tool that can turn a single shoot into dozens of ads. It uses digital copies of celebrities’ and athletes’ looks and voices stored by CAA. Ogilvy says one shoot can now produce 30-50 assets instead of 8-10. The talent or their agent must approve every asset, and finished ads carry a label saying AI was used.
Quick Take: Production is no longer the bottleneck. The value is now in proprietary data, access, and rights. Agencies that control access to famous people will have newfound leverage.
Meta, Google, and Anthropic release new AI models
What It Does: It's not easy keeping up with all the AI model releases. Muse Ember is Meta's smallest and cheapest model, for simple, repeated tasks that AI agents handle. Google’s Gemini 4 Hydrogen is a faster, cheaper model for everyday work, and it now powers Google Search for all users. Anthropic released Claude Fable 5.2, its most powerful public model, which is faster and cheaper than the last version. The new Mythos 5.2 is the same model as Fable, but without strict guardrails, so only approved organizations can use it.
Quick Take: Stop hunting for the “best” model. The AI companies are splitting their model lineups by job: tiny models for repetitive agent work, mid-size ones for everyday tasks, and a high-end model for world domination. Marketing teams should match each task to the cheapest model that can handle it adequately. Better yet, use AI tools that have model routers built-in.
Google Ads tests a weekly AI report card for your ad creative
What It Does: A new beta page in some Google Ads accounts, called Asset activity, uses AI to show weekly tip cards on ad headlines. The tips fall into four groups: featured, asset performance, asset diversity, and industry trends. For example, one card pointed out which headlines got the most clicks, and another suggested new headlines based on rising searches. Google hasn’t announced the feature; the page was spotted by Google Ads consultant Anthony Higman.
Quick Take: With bidding and targeting already automated, creative is the biggest lever left. Google's report card pushes marketers to feed it a steady stream of new headlines and assets. Creative volume is the new targeting, and the teams that can produce and test creative the fastest will win.
Shopify noses further into ad tech with Campaign Autopilot expansion
What It Does: Campaign Autopilot is Shopify’s AI tool for running ads on Meta, Microsoft, Snapchat, and Shop, Shopify’s shopping app, plus email marketing. Merchants set a monthly budget and rules for what the tool can do. Then Autopilot builds the campaigns, splits the budget across channels, and moves money toward what’s working. Shopify launched the tool in June and recently added SEO optimization and plans to add X next.
Quick Take: Amazon's power over brands comes from two things: it moves their products, and it essentially levies an ad tax to make sure their products are visible to consumers. Shopify has been the Amazon alternative for helping brands move products. Now Campaign Autopilot will try to be the Amazon Ads alternative to make sure their products are visible to consumers. The more Shopify builds out its ad capabilities, the less brands have to depend on Amazon to grow.
AI Use Case of The Week💡
Dermalogica uses AI to figure out which customers want which products
The Setup: Dermalogica, a Unilever skincare brand, sells online in 20+ countries and reaches millions of customers. Skincare must be highly personalized, since different skin types need different products. The brand needs each message to match a shopper’s main skin concern, like acne or dryness, but it doesn't have this information for every potential customer.
The AI Solution: Dermalogica uses Klaviyo, an AI-powered CRM, to organize its customer data and run its email and text marketing. Klaviyo pulls in purchase, loyalty, and subscription history, plus results from Dermalogica’s AI face mapping tool, which recommends products from a shopper’s photo. For shoppers who skip the photo, the brand uses pattern analysis to estimate their main skin concern, and it’s launching a quiz as another data source. The team then builds detailed audience segments based on skin concern and targets them through email, texts, and paid ads. For two new product launches, Dermalogica emailed a broad audience and used Claude to analyze its Klaviyo data and find which skin concerns were most common among the people who engaged. It will use those findings to target future marketing for those products.
The Results:
• Revenue from CRM grew 21% year over year
• More than 4M active customer profiles in Klaviyo
• More than 100M customer actions tracked in the past 12 months
Why This Matters: The face mapping tool is a free service that doubles as a data collection tool. Shoppers hand over a photo of their skin because they get something useful back. Many brands ask for customer data but offer little in return.
Your Action: Vibe code your own customer-facing data collection tool. Start with the data you need. Ask your AI: “I sell [product] to [customer]. The one thing I wish I knew about every customer is [their biggest problem / budget / goal]. Suggest five free tools they’d actually want to use that would reveal that.” Pick the best idea, then prompt: “Build this as an interactive tool. End with a personalized recommendation from [paste your products and who each is for].” Click through the tool as a customer would. Would you trade your data for that recommendation?
Other Notable Headlines📌
New AI ad formats are rolling out in the wild - ChatGPT’s Visual Ads are now live. They’re shown when people use ChatGPT to create an image and disappear once the image is ready. Google’s AI Mode Multiturn Ads are also live. They show up when people ask follow-up questions in an AI Mode conversation.
ChatGPT Visual Ads
In OpenAI’s ad business, advertisers come third - At LUMA’s DMS, VP of monetization Benji Shomair said OpenAI prioritizes user trust first, user value second, and advertiser value third.
Disney taps Adobe as “official AI innovation partner” - Adobe will build custom AI models for Disney, trained on its characters, settings, and visual styles. Disney’s theme park designers are already using one custom model to turn hand-drawn sketches into finished concept art.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang steps down amid alleged spy scandal - Huang reportedly had multiple extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy whose company was buying Nvidia chips, and two with Nvidia employees. CFO Colette Kress will serve as interim CEO until Huang is replaced.
That’s It For This Week 👋
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